OUTDOORS: Lowly trash species can save the day

“Talking trash” is usually associated with testosterone-fueled athletes in an attempt to rattle their opponents, as in, “your mother wears combat boots” in my day.

I do believe it has sunk to a much lower level now, grammatically and graphically.

“Garbage time” is taken to mean the third-string quarterback gets some snaps when his team is behind 49-0 in the fourth quarter.

In the world of angling, there are species considered “trash” or garbage” fish.

Last week’s column dealt with the glorious Atlantic salmon. These are not to be confused with the common carp, which is like comparing royalty with a bum — the latter no doubt a politically incorrect term these days on the order of swamp and slum.

But that’s the way it is. You want fluke, you catch sea robins and dogfish instead.

Wade a famous river in the Catskills for silver rainbows or wary brown trout and you catch chubs.

Striped bass fishermen consider bluefish (hardly a trash species) pests when their target is the lovely linesider and blues intercept bait or lure intended for the former.

Even fish sought for bait have a pecking order of preference. On our recent trip to Maine fishing for mackerel to live line for stripers we caught similar size pollock, which our guide eyed in disgust and tossed back.

On the fabled Musconetcong, the suckers were stacked like torpedoes in spring and gave a fair fight, but loathed as yucky bottom feeders. Suckers, however, and any bony fish of their ilk can be made into tasty fish cakes if you want to take the trouble.

The largemouth bass, considered a species that most Americans fish for in all kinds of waters, are the prize catches of million-dollar tournaments (a scourge on true sport fishing) and great on the plate, and considered “trash fish” in waters where native brook trout swim. There are regions of the Adirondacks where a person dumping bass into brook trout waters would be tarred and feathered if caught.

I confess to being somewhat of a fish snob in that I don’t like fish on the order of carp, sea robins, skate, chubs and their trailer trash cousins.

Some folks, misguided and warped, call the carp “Mr. Man.” I call him a dirtbag.

This is no doubt owing the fact that the best place to catch carp, and we did as kids, was off the sewage discharge pipes in the Susquehanna River at Wilkes-Barre, Pa. We caught ‘em and shot them in the head with a .22 rifle. Trash indeed. I lived in a town where “a river ran through it” and your toilet flushed into it in 1954.

Show me the guy who hasn’t caught a skate while fluke fishing and I’ll show you somebody who hasn’t gone flattie angling very often. The bottom also can be paved with sea robins gobbling your killie and squid sandwich rig.

A well-known former editor of a national fishing magazine has been our companion on scores of saltwater trips and insists we keep any decent size skates.

He eats the wings. I was reminded of same when reading an enjoyable article in a recent issue of The Fisherman Magazine by Brian Lodge entitled “Garbage Man’s Guide to Cleaning Fish.”

Dogfish, sea robin and skate are all table fare for this guy. Go to his website at www.garbagefish.com for more, as well as info on the garbage fishing tournament.

Meanwhile, an old friend asks that I keep the heads of any stripers I catch. He married an Asian girl and in that culture fish heads are an ingredient for a savory seafood meal, just as a low country boil down South includes everything but garden slugs in the pot, and I’m not too sure it doesn’t.

But despite my disdain for carp, other species such as ling – not a garbage fish – can save the day when the fluke, blues or bass have lockjaw.

Bluegills taste better than trout and when you can’t catch tarpon, which is not eaten anyway, you settle for amberjack or some other species they use for fast food fish burgers.

It’s a target game; that often becomes a target of opportunity mission.